The Case of the Abominable Snowman

by Nicholas Blake

  Nigel, studying the brothers, noticed that Hereward’s face was struggling between incredulity and consternation, and that Andrew was shivering uncontrollably.

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever told anyone about this,’ said Andrew apologetically. ‘Confession has curious physical effects on one.’

  ‘Good God!’ sighed Hereward on a released breath. ‘What a damnable business! If only I’d known – I’d like ten minutes alone with that fella. Wasn’t any attempt made to find him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But he’d disappeared very successfully. He gave Betty and her friends a false name, of course. Must have made a packet, if he did it regularly. The children had to pay through the nose for the dope he peddled – some had rich parents and plenty of pocket-money, and others stole to get the cash. Even then, he claimed that what they paid him was only on account – that was to get an extra hold over them, as I told you.’

  There was a long silence, which Nigel finally broke by saying, ‘Isn’t it about time you also told us whom you were referring to when you said there was someone in this house who revelled in evil? I suppose you meant Miss Restorick?’

  Andrew’s fists clenched on the arms of his chair, his face darkened like a thundercloud. ‘I don’t know. Damn you! Can’t you see it’s because I didn’t know –’ he broke off.

  ‘That you doped the cat’s milk and offered John and Priscilla cigarettes during the charade?’ insisted Nigel.

  Hereward’s face was ludicrous with consternation. He turned his head from Nigel to Andrew and back again as though he were watching a game of tennis almost too fast for the eye to follow.

  ‘Yes,’ said Andrew. ‘You may as well know. Knocking about the world, you develop a sixth sense for danger. I felt there was something wrong as soon as I got down here – something to do with Betty, or Bogan, or both of them. It’s funny, I’ve got the artist’s intuitive power, yet I can’t write a line of verse or play a bar of music, and old Hereward here, who looks like a bit of Essex clay, plays the piano like nobody’s business. Well, anyway, I snuffed danger in the air. I hadn’t seen Betty for some time, and I was horrified by the change in her. There was a look on her face of – of – I don’t quite know how to –’

  ‘Disgust?’ Nigel quoted Miss Cavendish.

  Andrew glanced at him strangely. ‘Maybe you’re right. However. I didn’t trust Bogan an inch. Betty refused to talk about him. So I poked around a bit in his room.’

  ‘Dammit, Andrew, wasn’t that a bit steep? I mean, the fella’s my guest.’ Hereward’s face was a study of dismay and curiosity.

  ‘Yes, dreadfully bad form, I’m afraid. I even opened a locked cash-box I found there – I’m pretty handy at opening locks. And I found some cigarettes. Well, you don’t generally lock up your fags in a cash-box. So, at a venture, I tried one of them on the pussy-cat. With startling results.’

  ‘Why not just smoke it yourself?’

  ‘Because I wanted to observe reactions. You see, I had to give Bogan a fair trial. It was possible that he’d confiscated the marijuana cigarettes from Betty, I didn’t know then that he was treating her for cocaine-addiction. Even now, it’s conceivable that she couldn’t stand being deprived of the cocaine, and had gone back to hashish, and Bogan had got wise to it and taken her cigarettes away.’

  ‘You observed reactions. What were they?’

  ‘Result negative. Bogan has the medical pokerface. Betty seemed more or less apathetic, nothing you could take hold of.’

  ‘What about the charade?’

  ‘It was like this. Finding those cigarettes and discovering what they contained, my mind went back to that business in America. I began to wonder was history being repeated here. John and Priscilla –’

  Hereward Restorick groaned and put his head in his hands.

  ‘– so, when I played the charade, I used the same phrase as the stranger used outside the school when he offered the cigarettes. I said, “None of you babes smoke, of course?” It was enough to send Betty off the deep end. Bogan preserved his usual dignified façade. Now, what I ask myself is this – would Betty have reacted so instantaneously to those words, which she’d originally heard twelve years or so ago, if marijuana wasn’t – so to speak – in the air again?’

  ‘That’s very sound,’ commented Nigel. ‘You thought she was intending to get at the children? But didn’t you put your suspicions to her openly after that?’

  Andrew’s eyes looked as if he was in physical agony. ‘I wish I had,’ he said painfully. ‘But don’t you understand? She was my sister. We’d been as close as any brother and sister have ever been. I couldn’t even hint to her that I suspected her of trying to corrupt the children. I just couldn’t. I funked it. Besides, there was another interpretation of the whole affair, and I wanted to look into that first.’

  ‘You mean, Bogan might have been the evil genius at work and Betty an accomplice – willing or unwilling?’

  ‘I say,’ remarked Hereward, ‘I suppose Bogan isn’t the same fella as the one who originally gave this bloody stuff to Elizabeth? I mean, he’s been in America. I never did cotton to the fella.’

  ‘I wish I could be certain.’ Andrew’s voice was a whisper. ‘I didn’t see much of Engelman – that’s what the chap called himself. He had a yellowish face and a thin black moustache, about the same height as Bogan, but the voice was quite different. I just don’t know. I told you I had a scrap with the fellow. It was twelve years ago. When I met Bogan down here, I felt a sort of physical reaction – when you’ve had an all-in scrap with a man, something in you always recognizes him again. But that’s not evidence. And I’m not sure my reaction wasn’t just a natural antipathy. As he said himself, I was jealous over the influence he had on Betty. She was so different. She seemed to have closed up against me.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Nigel. ‘I don’t think Bogan’s possible identification as Engelman is of primary importance at the moment. The question is, could he have killed your sister, and why should he want to?’

  ‘I’m prejudiced against him, I admit. But let us suppose the worst about him. Let’s suppose he’s the devil incarnate, and go on from there. He has Betty under his thumb, with the hypnosis.’

  Nigel thought, ‘It’s no use fighting, Betty, I’ve got you body and soul now, for ever.’ Was this the true meaning of what Miss Ainsley had overheard?

  ‘He intends to use her as his means for getting at Hereward’s children. He tells her she must entice them to smoke the marijuana cigarettes: he may have some doped sweets as well. Now I don’t believe,’ Andrew went on with a compelling seriousness, ‘I don’t believe the human soul may not be utterly damned. But also I don’t believe that Betty could have changed so terribly from the girl I knew. Whether Bogan’s method of compulsion was hypnotism or withholding from her the cocaine she craved for, I am certain she’d still have a powerful resistance against doing such a thing to John and Priscilla. They were always special favourites of hers, weren’t they, Hereward?’

  His brother nodded dumbly.

  ‘Now suppose Betty had made up her mind to disobey his orders, at whatever cost to herself. She might even have recognized him as the original Engelman – but that, as you say, is not strictly relevant. What would she do? She’d pretend to fall in with his evil designs. She’d collect all the evidence she could against him – remember, Bogan’s an eminent specialist and his reputation is vulnerable. When she’d got her evidence – it’d probably have to be written evidence, for no one would take the word of a neurotic drug-addict against her doctor – she’d force a show-down. Touch those children and I’ll expose you. Well, Bogan can’t afford to live under a threat like that. Betty knows too much. He’s got to get that evidence back, and in the process he kills her.’

  The burnt papers in Bogan’s grate, thought Nigel. Bogan whispering to Betty ‘stick o’ tea’ after the cat episode, suggesting there was such a conspiracy between them. It all fits in.

  ‘That’s remarkably interesting,’ he
said. ‘I can’t understand why you haven’t put it before the police.’

  Andrew eyed him quizzically. ‘My dear chap, I have a skin to save too, for what it’s worth. My room is nearest to Betty’s. If I tell the police I’d grounds for thinking that Betty was after the children, they’d begin to wonder very hard if it wasn’t I who killed her.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘My belly’s as cold as if I had swallowed

  snowballs for pills.’

  SHAKESPEARE

  ONCE AGAIN DR Bogan was on the carpet. Nigel had communicated to Inspector Blount the story which Andrew had told him. Blount was at first sceptical of its value; he had the policeman’s dislike for the melodramatic, and Andrew’s statement opened up a difficult field of investigation. But he was conscientious: if, to solve the case, it was necessary to research into events that had taken place far back in the past and in a distant country, he would do so.

  ‘Now, doctor,’ he was saying in his suavest tones, ‘some evidence has come to light I’d like to have a word with you about. You’re – e’eh – familiar with the effects of hashish, no doubt?’

  Dr Bogan nodded. His eyes, unwinking, gazed back at Blount. The inspector maintained a full minute’s silence, which he employed in diligently sharpening a pencil. But his favourite tactic of forcing an opponent out of an entrenched position by offering long silences did not work this time. Bogan’s fingers combed his beard absently, his body was relaxed, he had no intention of taking the initiative.

  ‘There,’ said Blount, ‘that’ll do. Very useful these old razor blades are for sharpening pencils.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Bogan satirically, indicating his beard. ‘That is one disadvantage of not shaving.’

  ‘Quite so. Now, perhaps, you’ll be so good as to tell us how you happened to be in possession of cigarettes containing hashish?’

  ‘Marijuana, to be precise,’ replied the doctor, smiling faintly. ‘I take it you refer to those I have locked up in my cash-box. You possess a search-warrant, of course?’

  ‘I do. But, as it happens, my information about the cigarettes comes from elsewhere. I wonder, by the way, that you made no complaint when you found one of them was missing.’

  ‘That was quite out of the question,’ said the doctor firmly. ‘It was in the nature of a professional secret.’

  Blount paused again for some while, and again without effect. At last he said, a little irritably, ‘I asked you how you came into possession of –’

  ‘Sure. If I’ve held it back, it was partly because it would be a confession of failure. The day I got here, I discovered that my patient was using these cigarettes. I had had certain suspicions before. I confiscated the cigarettes. But I said nothing about it, even when I saw the cat going haywire – it had obviously been doped with the drug – because it meant my treatment had not been as successful as I’d thought, and because professional secrecy demanded it.’

  ‘Have you any idea who took the cigarette which was used to dope the cat?’

  ‘No. I assumed at first it was a practical joke of Miss Restorick’s and she’d not handed over her whole stock of cigarettes to me. Then, when I examined my cash-box, I found two missing.’

  ‘You asked her if she’d taken them?’

  ‘Yes, immediately after the cat affair. She denied it. But I’m afraid drug-addicts are quite untrustworthy. On the other hand, I can see no reason why she should play such a silly trick.’

  ‘“Immediately after?”’ put in Nigel. ‘That was where you used the phrase “stick of tea” to her?’

  Dr Bogan glanced at him keenly. ‘Yes. It was what she called the marijuana cigarette. It’s American slang, you know.’

  ‘Was this marijuana-smoking of hers a recent development?’ asked Blount.

  ‘To the best of my knowledge.’

  ‘Does the name, Engelman, mean anything to you?’

  Dr Bogan’s eyes unfocused for a moment, it gave him an expression almost of idiocy.

  ‘Engelman? Engelman? Mean anything? I don’t follow you. I don’t know anyone of that name.’

  ‘Were you ever in — ?’ Blount mentioned the name of the American town where Elizabeth and Andrew had been at school.

  ‘No, never. I take it what you’re suggesting is that, since Miss Restorick used the American slang for a marijuana cigarette, her supplies must have been American? I’m afraid you’re leaving me altogether in the dark. Is this Engelman the person who supplied her?’

  ‘You didn’t ask her for the name of the purveyor yourself?’

  ‘I did. But she wouldn’t tell me. It was the same over the cocaine. I couldn’t press her about it, naturally. You lose the confidence of drug-addicts if you give the impression of doing police work on the side.’

  Blount took off his pince-nez, breathed on the glasses and rubbed them vigorously against his sleeve.

  ‘Well, thank you, doctor. I think that’ll be all for now. The inquest, as you know, is to-morrow. It will no doubt be adjourned pending further inquiry, and you’ll be able to get back to your patients.’

  At the door, Bogan gave them a sidelong glance.

  ‘You keep your own counsel, I see, Inspector.’

  Blount beamed at him. ‘Oh yes, we have our professional secrecy, too … H’m, imposing sort of fellow,’ he added, when the doctor had gone out. ‘Got his wits about him. Or maybe just telling the truth. You never know with that type. Dear me, dear me. Now we shall have to go farther back still into antecedents. A weary road. Give the American police something to do, anyway.’

  ‘You think there may be something in this Engelman tie-up?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m a wee bit suspicious when a witness doesn’t exhibit some healthy curiosity. I got the idea he was holding himself in hard when I asked about Engelman and America. It’d be the natural thing for him to ask what the hell I was driving at, you’d think.’

  The inspector then went off with his sergeant and one of the local men to continue his search of the house. It was not a job Nigel envied, in a place as big and rambling as Easterham Manor. But Blount would go through with it. If there were any clues waiting to be picked up here, he would find them. Nigel grimaced, thinking of Blount’s really terrifying patience and thoroughness. Like a human vacuum cleaner, Blount was. Which reminded Nigel that a maid had gone all over Elizabeth Restorick’s bedroom with a vacuum cleaner on the morning before she had been killed, so there was no possibility that Will Dykes had shed his dressing-gown tassel-cord there on a previous visit. Either he’d been in her room the night she was murdered, or the cord had been planted there.

  Nigel still kept an open mind about Dykes. But supposing he had not murdered Elizabeth and the cord had been planted there, then the burnt papers in Bogan’s grate looked bad for Bogan. It was improbable that some third party, as the murderer, would attempt to incriminate two of the house-party.

  Presently Nigel was walking back to the Dower House with Georgia. On the way, she told him the result of the commission he had given her. John and Priscilla had at first been very cagey: their aunt’s behaviour over a harmless little charade had evidently alarmed them deeply. However, Georgia at last coaxed out of them the statement that, the morning after the charade, Aunt Betty had come into the nursery where they were alone and made them promise not to accept a cigarette from anyone, ever, till they were much older. She had been ‘in such a flap about it’, as Priscilla put it, that they had promised without asking any questions.

  ‘I remembered about marijuana being put into sweets also,’ said Georgia, ‘so I asked them if Betty had said anything about sweets. They said their aunt had asked them to tell her if anyone gave them sweets which made them feel funny. They said, naturally, “You bet we will”. John was quite excited and asked her if she meant someone was going to try and poison them, like Snow White.’

  ‘And did anyone?’

  ‘No. No chocolates, no cigarettes.’

  ‘Elizabeth didn’t warn them agains
t anyone in particular?’

  ‘No. I think they would have told me if she had. Have you got any further?’

  Nigel gave her a brief account of Andrew’s statement, which took them to the gate of the Dower House.

  ‘What a horrible, horrible affair!’ Georgia murmured. ‘I begin to wish we’d never come here. You know, there’s one thing you ought to go into. Andrew was obviously hinting that Bogan’s behind the whole thing. Well, I like Andrew, and Bogan gives me a touch of the creeps. But you ought to find out whether Andrew has some quite different reason for having his knife in the doctor.’

  ‘How am I to do that?’

  ‘You might ask Bogan. If he offers an explanation, it could easily be verified or disproved.’

  After lunch, Nigel strolled back to the Manor alone. As he walked round the curve of the drive which brought the house into view, an animated spectacle met his eyes.

  John and Priscilla were rolling a huge snowball, which increased in size with every revolution and left streaks of green grass where it had torn up the snow. Andrew Restorick was urging them on, while Miss Ainsley stood apart in the tentative pose of one who would like to join in the fun but is not sure whether she has received an invitation. Priscilla’s royal-blue hooded cloak, Miss Ainsley’s scarlet woollen gloves and John’s rosy cheeks, Andrew’s buff-coloured sheepskin waistcoat – all made a lively play of colour against the snow-tipped face of Easterham Manor. The children shrieked with excitement, and tragedy seemed far away.

  As Nigel approached, Andrew went into the house, to reappear carrying a kitchen chair. He sat Miss Ainsley down on this, rather unceremoniously, saying:

  ‘We shall execute a statue of good Queen Victoria. You are to be the model.’

  ‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ she replied, laughing defensively. ‘I shall just die of cold, that’s all.’

  ‘Don’t be alarmed. We’re not going to wall you up. You just sit there and flap your arms to keep warm, like Queen Victoria.’